This volume of 29 short stories begins with O. Henry's most famous - "The Gift of the Magi" which is still as sweet and ironic as ever. Along the same line is "A Service of Love" about a young, artistic married couple Joe and Delia. Delia is a pianist who unable to make a living in concert decides to find students to train. Joe, a struggling painter, tells Delia he is doing small commissioned works for a collector. When Delia returns home one day after a session with a student, Joe sees that she is sporting a large bandage on her right hand. Delia tells him that her student spilled some hot food on her hand but Joe stares at the bandage strangely. In truth Delia has been working as a steam presser in a laundry and burned her hand on a hot iron. Joe confesses that he has actually been working in a laundry and that very same day was asked to provide some soft cloth as bandaging for a worker who had burned her hand.

"After Twenty Years" tells the story of two friends from New York City who pledged to meet 20 years in the future at their old favorite restaurant. Bob is waiting for Jimmy to arrive when a policeman passes by and Bob tells the policeman how he is to meet his long lost friend and brags how he has made his fortune over the past two decades. Shortly after the policeman leaves another man approaches Bob saying that he is Jimmy. Although Bob thinks that JImmy has changed quite a bit he thinks nothing of it and the two friends begin to stroll down the street. But Jimmy takes Bob to jail and hands Bob a note from the policeman: "Bob: I was at the appointed place on time but when I saw your face I recognized a 'wanted' man. Somehow I couldn't arrest you myself so I went around and got a plainclothesman to do the job. Jimmy"

There are so many gems in this collection. I love O. Henry's use of irony and coincidence along with the unexpected twists at the story's end. His words are so beautiful at times as in this description of a man returning to his rural home after several years in the city:
"The old voices of the soil spoke to him. Leaf and bud and blossom conversed with him in the old vocabulary of his careless youth - the inanimate things, the familiar stones and rails, the gates and furrows and roofs and turns of the road had an eloquence, too, and a power in the transformation. The country had smiled and he had felt the breath of it, and his heart was drawn as if in a moment back to his old love. The city was far away."
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This collection of O. Henry's short stories has 29 tales, including an old favorite of mine, the famous "The Gift of the Magi" of the title.

O. Henry (aka William Sidney Porter) is known for endings with a twist, and these did not disappoint. Many are funny, but a few are serious. Most of the stories are set in New York City, where the author spent the last eight years (1902-1910) of his too-short life. My favorite stories are the ones set in Texas, where he lived from 1882 (when he was 20) to 1897, starting at a sheep ranch in South Texas, and eventually moving to Austin (where he worked as a pharmacist, then as a draftsman for the state's General Land Office, and finally as a bank teller for the First National Bank) and then Houston (where he wrote for the Houston Post newspaper).

The Texas-set stories in this book are "The Enchanted Kiss," set in San Antonio, and "The Lonesome Road," which mentions Aransas Pass and the Nueces River in south Texas.

Other stories I particularly enjoyed were "The Third Ingredient," "The Furnished Room," and the long but satisfying "The Roads of Destiny."

© Amanda Pape - 2015

[This book was borrowed from and returned to my local public library.] ( )